Andy Kozar

Andy Kozar – The Consent of Sound and Meaning: Music of Eric Richards (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:03 minutes | 915 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings

The Consent of Sound and Meaning opens with the declamatory A Fanfare for Diebenkorn for three trumpets, all played by loadbang’s Andy Kozar. Richard Diebenkorn was an abstract expressionist painter based in California; one can hear Richards capturing the austerity of reorganized visual elements in the pointed staccato notes followed by a sustained tone. Wingsets is the largest work on the album in terms of instrumentation. Written for a vibrantly colorful ensemble of nine instrumentalists and nine singers (including the baritone soloist, here Steve Hrycelak), it sets two simultaneously overlaid texts drawn from the Catholic liturgy. Richards contrasts clusters with wide leaps of a ninth in the solo part, and the short work evokes Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles in its spare, direct quality.
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Andy Kozar – A Few Kites (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:08:52 minutes | 679 MB | Genre: Classical
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © New Focus Recordings

Trumpeter Andy Kozar (loadbang) releases “”A Few Kites,”” a collection of electro-acoustic works written for him that reflect the diversity in this essential medium. Featuring works by Paula Matthusen, Ken Ueno, Quinn Collins, Scott Worthington, Jeffrey Gavett, Heather Stebbins, Eve Beglarian, and Tyler Harrison, Kozar’s versatility and virtuosity is in consistent display across this engaging release. A native of Pittsburgh, Andy Kozar is a New York City based trumpeter, improviser, composer and educator that has been called a ‘star soloist’ by TimeOutNY, noted for his ‘precise trumpeting’ by New York Classical Review and has been said to be agile as he navigated leaps and slurs with grace…he shifted between lyricism and aggression deftly by the International Trumpet Guild Journal. A strong advocate of contemporary music, he is a founding member of the contemporary music quartet loadbang which has been called inventive by the New York Times, cultivated by The New Yorker, and a formidable new-music force by TimeOutNY.
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